Japanese Character in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The study of Japanese personality is a character istic emphasis of postwar social sciences in Japan. H. Minami describes basic traditions of submission to the powerful and of duty as fixed obligations toward statuses, not to individuals. The family hierarchy still is the model for social relations. Obedience is the highest virtue, and clever persons manipulate obedience to private advantage. L. T. Doi described the psy chotic syndrome of amaeru that originates in a frustrated need for love from a powerful person: this disturbance is consistent with the socially imposed need for a patron. Distrust of hap piness is traditional; Minami's term for it is "Japanese maso chism." W. Caudill has shown how crowded living stresses simple pleasures: bathing, child care, and sleeping in one room; persons who cannot exclude sexual feeling from these situa tions repudiate the simple pleasure and turn to nihilism or psy chosis. Traditional giri (duties toward statuses) denies indi viduality ; the ethics of respect for individuals conflicts with submission, rejects impersonalism, and accepts happiness. In contrast with Japan's technological florescence, revision of patterns of human relations proceeds slowly.